In Bowl Season, Signs of Hope for Change

College football is heading toward a pivotal, climactic moment. With all due respect to Granddaddy, we’re not talking about Monday’s Rose Bowl game.

Associated Press

Oregon coach Chip Kelly leads the Ducks into Monday’s Rose Bowl.

The Bowl Championship Series appears to be on the verge of major change. It could come over the next few months. The elite bowls’ television contracts expire in 2014, and college-football leaders are expected to propose what changes they’d like to see to the BCS as soon as this spring. But what kind of change? Will the conferences decide to ditch automatic-qualifying berths, which have repeatedly caused undesirable bowl matchups? Will the much-discussed “plus-one” concept—essentially a four-team playoff system—finally happen?

For some time now, the wind has been blowing in both directions. At IMG’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum last month, Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky spoke out against automatic-qualifying bids, saying they’ve become a “negative driver,” and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said he’d be fine if they were eliminated. Also, two Pac-12 Conference athletic directors said the plus-one model is bound to eventually happen. Washington’s Scott Woodward said he supports it, and it was called inevitable by Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby, whose Cardinal might have been part of such a playoff both this season and last had it existed.

The fact that Pac-12 athletic directors have spoken in favor of the plus-one idea has led to the presumption that the conference as a whole will support it—and that it is indeed inevitable, since the only remaining obstacle appears to be the Big Ten. Delany argued against the plus-one last month, calling it a “slippery slope” that could lead to a larger, full-blown playoff.

But hold on. Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Saturday that the conference “has not defined a position yet” regarding the plus-one model. Further, the Pac-12’s recent, landmark agreement with the Big Ten—which calls for each school’s non-conference football schedule to include a game against the other conference by 2017—hardly suggests that the two longtime partners are of opposing minds.

“I think what this alliance with the Big Ten reinforces is the importance of the Rose Bowl and the importance of our historical partnership in it,” Scott said. “What this says is the Rose Bowl is part of the DNA of our conference… Going into any upcoming conversations, I think this will make it clear to everyone how important the Rose Bowl is to this conference.”

If there’s one BCS issue that seems most likely to change, it’s the provision that led to Texas Christian playing in the 2011 Rose Bowl.

TCU appeared in the game instead of a traditional Pac-12 representative because of a rule that required the Rose Bowl to take a team from a non-automatic-qualifying conference the first time it had an opening. The Rose traditionally matches the Pac-12 and Big Ten champions unless they qualify for the national-title game, which Oregon did last season. It was just the third time since 1920 that a current Pac-12 school didn’t appear in the Rose Bowl.

Scott joined the Pac-12 in 2009, and he said that the negotiation that led to TCU’s bid happened before his watch. He called it “a compromise and accommodation for the greater good.” But he added: “It’s not something that we want to see more of, to be sure.”

The Rose Bowl has become something of a consolation game since the BCS began in 1998, since the national-title game has become the sport’s ultimate destination. But the Pac-12 has made it increasingly clear that it wants to be here. “The Rose Bowl is tradition,” said Oregon coach Chip Kelly, whose sixth-ranked Ducks are a six-point favorite Monday against No. 9 Wisconsin. “It’s that feeling when you come out of the tunnel and you can kind of just think back of all the games that have been played there.”

By contrast, the indoor, ultra-modern University of Phoenix Stadium, where Oregon lost the last national-title game to Auburn, “felt like you were walking into a spaceship,” Kelly said. “I’m a lot more comfortable in the Rose Bowl setting. That’s what college football is all about, and we’re excited to be back here.”

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